Other views: Obama gun plan faces race against time

The sad history of gun politics is that the public demand for reasonable restrictions spikes after a terrible incident, such as the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school last month.

But the zeal always fades, the way it did after the Columbine High School murders in 1999 or the movie theater shootings just last summer in Aurora, Colo. Slow-walking the effort plays into the hands of the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress; it's no accident that the NRA and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky both said it would be better to wait for a while after Sandy Hook to address the issue.

So it's encouraging that President Obama, who expressed little interest in gun violence before he was re-elected, has moved quickly. No single fix will stop mass killings or the wider gun-violence problem, so Obama's numerous proposals Wednesday are a smart way to surround the problem. Doing something useful to slow the killing requires an "all of the above" approach that attacks this national plague from as many different directions as politicians have the courage to try.

Obama signed a variety of executive orders, but, as he acknowledged, the most useful of the ideas will require congressional approval: Renew and tighten the expired ban on assault weapons, and on the high-capacity ammunition magazines that let spree killers fire 30 rounds or more before pausing to reload, when they can sometimes be tackled and stopped. And expand instant background checks to cover the 40 percent of gun sales that go unchecked when people buy guns from non-dealers in private sales, at gun shows or on the Internet.

Conventional wisdom says the assault weapons and magazine ban was ineffective when it was in force from 1994 to 2004, but that conventional wisdom is promoted by the gun lobby, and it's simply wrong. Studies show that the ban reduced gun deaths and steadily cut the number of these dangerous weapons recovered in crime investigations. Since the ban expired, mass killings have increased..

Just as important is expanding background checks to cover sales that now go on in the legal shadows. One study showed that this was how 80 percent of convicted criminals got their guns. Background checks have worked to keep guns out of the hands of many people who shouldn't have them, including felons and the mentally ill. But the lack of checks in private sales is a huge and dangerous loophole. The trick is to make sure that getting such a check is inexpensive and easy for private sellers and buyers, while also making clear that the failure to undergo such checks will be severely penalized, and that felons who fail background checks will be prosecuted.

Obama also proposed toughening the outrageously weak gun laws that can make it just a misdemeanor to buy a gun for someone else who couldn't clear a background check. These "straw purchases" are a common way for killers to get guns. The deranged ex-con in upstate New York couldn't legally buy the assault rifle he used to murder two firefighters last month; a neighbor allegedly bought it for him.

How many of Obama's proposals will pass is uncertain.

If Americans really want reasonable, effective new restrictions on guns, as polls increasingly suggest, they're going to have to do more than tell pollsters or their friends that. This will take money, organization and the kind of sustained pressure Congress cannot ignore.

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Other views: Obama gun plan faces race against time

The sad history of gun politics is that the public demand for reasonable restrictions spikes after a terrible incident, such as the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut

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